Bound by the Thinest Mercy
Becoming what will save us.
When you cut your skin, healing cells flock to the wound spot, like starlings in the wind. Flying over to where it hurts, they start healing. Like a thin cotton blanket, they cover the gauge and seal the opening. Their job is to respond quickly, protect the other cells that will work deeply under the surface to painstakingly heal the further levels of wounding. Often years are spent quietly mending what no one is seeing.
The first responder cells in my body are running to treat wounds they cannot locate on my physical body. A deep, difficult pain has been moving through me lately, something that does not leave marks on my skin but courses through me all the same. A feeling of weight pressing in, a feeling of sorrow in the air, a sense of the earth itself crying out. I see it in my little ones, in their bodies working harder than ever to fight off illness. Nature groans under the strain of our ignorance. I feel the heat of helplessness and suffocation inside me when faced with forces so vast and unrelenting.
What can we do to hold pain without being swallowed up by it? Is there a way to acknowledge our brokenness without forgetting that we are always moving toward healing? To help seal the heartache, what rushes to the wound?
Upon waking in the night, I found myself already praying. I pray for the protection of my children, and for the protection of all children. Relief from severe illnesses. For the earth, her birds, her soil, and her rivers. Our household and land.Humanity. It was like I was dreaming in prayer. Perhaps this too is healing, perhaps this too, is a flock of starlings tending to these unseen wounds.
In the morning, I told my husband, and he said the same thing. He falls asleep praying and wakes up praying. The best use of our time is to use each moment of our wakefulness as an opportunity for us to bless and show gratitude for what is already here.
I use my words as an offering, hoping that somehow, something can hear them. Throughout my body, I feel them rocking like a metronome, carrying a healing frequency through sound, air, and breath. There are days when prayers seem like building a fire—the only thing warm enough to keep me from unraveling and growing cold. Some days, it's all the energy I have to offer, a drowsy whisper into the unknown before I drift to sleep. When doubt is fierce, I pray not because I am certain it will change anything, but because I can't bear to stop. Because to pray is to continue loving, even when loving feels unbearable. Because to send my voice into the air with blessing is to insist there is something holy listening.
The other day, I was longing for a great-grandmother. The archetypal grandmother with her wide hips and bosom, humming gently in a tufted, sun-dappled chair by the window. I needed somewhere to cry, and I needed someone thoughtful and knowing to hold me while I did. The throaty hum and the warm, broad, weathered hand brushing the hair from my face. Lips wrinkled with age kissing my forehead. I wanted to feel my tears soak in the linen of her blouse. The kind of safety I yearned for can only be found through another body that has survived, and discovered peace despite the grief that comes with living. I have never known what to do with this longing because no one is there to receive it, or is that the truth?
I would like to ask her when I became an adult and how I still felt like a child. How do we hold the weight of others when our own knees are buckling? Each morning we face a world that steadily cries with its needs outside our bedroom door. I want to know where I signed up for this life and if I was told I would have be suspended by a breath while I cradled my struggling to breathe child yet again. How the terror would rip through me, shattering any sense of myself, and how deeply, instinctively, cellularly, I would wish to protect everything from fire, flood, and shrapnel. How is this possible to contain and continue?
I would like her to rock me gently until I can feel my feet under me again. For a while, I want warm arms around me and doors closed. A dark room without anyone needing me. It's like I'm still a child in so many ways, seeking love and comfort from someone I've never known.
Later in the day, I will speak with a woman I have never met. She has golden hair with wild curls and black glasses with circular frames. On her wall is a sculpture of a face with angel wings. The woman tells me I have grandmother energy. I have an elder in me. A nurturing quality.